YouSaid · the spoken record

Anya Fernald

lines on the record: 124
first: 2021-07-23
most recent: 2021-07-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's usually just kind of like okay pasture dirty life if you ever see kind of like you know scrubbly lots with lots of you know cows and calves on that's a cow calf operation so there's also a loophole unfortunately where people use the term grass fed and they're actually referring to animals that at some point in their life had grass but that might be pretty far in the rearview mirror.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way the cattle industry is in the US, there's segmentation. So there's calc operations, then those calves get sold to stalker operations, which raised animals in their teens, basically, and then those get sold to feed lots. And so those three phases, that first phase of the cow calf is always on grass. It's mother cows and mom cows are amazing. They can thrive on anything and still put all their nutrients into their baby and their babies will be healthy. So you never are putting mother cows on really premium pasture.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The variance within grass fed is still small compared to the variance between conventional and grass-fed, right? So there's definitely things to look for within it, but the real difference is between those two. Also thing to notice is that it's not a verified word. Grass-fed means animals that have been on grass at some point in their life.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm always looking if you're evaluating grass fed animals, you want to get animals that are typically allowed to live for longer because their flavor is going to be better. There's going to be a bit more fat and their omega ratios also very, very differently. And I've seen omega ratios on our farm everywhere from one to three to one to one, ideal as one-to-one game is typically one-to-one or one to two, omega-3 to sixes. But in operations where you don't have year-round grass, it's more complicated. You know, you're feeding hay and you don't get that three to six ratio. Omega threes come from green grass. They're the fat in greens. And so they're scarce and costly, right? So you can have grass fed and finished animals that don't have that perfect ratio because maybe they're in a climate or for whatever reasons. We've had to do it too during the droughts to do hay finishing. It's not optimal. It changes the ratio. So there's a little bit of variance within it. I'd say though.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, are all grass-fed meats created the same? The diet, yeah, nutritional profile broadly, but the length of time that the animal lives is extremely important for the flavor of the meat. We're taking our beef to 24 to 26 months. Conventional is around 18 months.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Black and shiny inside compared to grass-fed animals like green, smells like compost. So the animals themselves are whole physiology is damaged by that food, but they also gain weight really quickly and they put on a lot of fats. Like if you or me were to eat a bunch of processed food compared to eating a bunch of greens, it's the same impact. You're going to blow up. So the problem for grass fed is getting the animals to gain weight. They're getting a ton of exercise. They're eating really clean, right? And they're super chill. So that's different from the animals that are kept still eating really nutrient-dense foods and under a ton of stress, which is a confinement animal.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Grass fed beef has been on grass its entire life, and you want to look for the words 100% grass fed or grass fed and finished. Now, the challenge with Feeding beef, grass its whole life is that it gains weight more slowly. Although beef didn't evolve. Corn and things, it can't eat them. And in eating them, it gains weight more rapidly and has a version of like an inflammatory response. You actually look inside the rumen of the animal, inside the stomach, it's like,”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know the landscape to know what. But my sense is that it's very hard. Very hard, and our farming operation to scale has been incredibly complex and challenging. We now work with partner farms. I see their operations. They're incredibly complex. You know, it just seems like there's got to be a way to make some of these things simpler and easier to share information. I don't know what that answer”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thousands of American ranches are selling carbon credits right now. The data is that valid, and they're not selling carbon credits from grassland that just got a fence around it. They're selling carbon credits for verified data from animals assisting in carbon sequestration. So there's got to be a way to get the tech community involved in ways to help regenerative agriculture scale.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pigs are incredibly intelligent, so I'm not surprised that they're a subject matter for neural link. They're smarter than dogs and they're empathetic and emotional. And they're, we'll go look at our pigs afterwards and see, but they're kind of like joyful and exuberant when they're in good health. And so that makes sense. I'm interested and open. I feel that the kind of bleeding edge agriculture movement that I'm on the edge of in some ways were a larger operator. We as a movement have to Have to get into the game. We have to move forward in a way that allows us to scale if we want to be viable. So I think there has to be openness to how that can happen. And I also think there needs to be more thoughtful and noisy data about how regenerative ranching can sequester carbon. I mean,”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And grubs and worms and stuff to eat really challenging for the chicken. So you got to give them some high density, high calorie food, different from the evolutionary diet is a really key thing. That's the fundamental thing for health. And it's also interesting because the evolutionary diet ties to human health. I've looked at the nutritional analysis on all of our products and the evolutionary diet is for the case of beef and lamb gets their omega-3 to six ratios the same as wild game. It's not like beef is really radically different from elk, a ruminant species, right? If you feed beef and evolutionary diet, their nutritional profile is the same as wild meat, as wild ruminant.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're omnivores. So you often see, and I've seen people try to raise like a grass fed chicken and that doesn't exist. I mean, they need a higher omnivores, eat everything. They're what's called monogastric. They got one stomach. And that one stomach needs higher density nutrients. So in the case of chicken, if you were to do, you know, look back in American history in the 1950s, it took, you know, commercial chickens took like 54 weeks to come to full weight. Now it's two and a half weeks in confinement farming on our systems. It's like eight, ten weeks typically. So it's a very, you have to give them some amount of nutrient density, but there's the idea that no grain, because that's a misinformation for any type of commercial operation free range, regenerative, pastured, everything, you're going to have to have a grain feed to get any type of, it's actually, I think for the case of chickens, unless you're in a place with like tons of natural seeds.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's pretty simple. You can look at the physiology of the animal and figure that out. So ruminant species are lamb goats and beef, and they have five stomachs. They evolved eating really low calorie, high fiber foods. That's why they've got all the stomachs. They need a lot of processing. U or I were to eat grass, die in a week, right? Our physiology can't handle it. Cows were built and evolved to eat this very low-calorie, very high fiber, very low density food. And they walk around slowly. They're moving constantly and they're eating it. We put them on a corn fed diet, that's the opposite of their evolutionary diet and their systems really struggle with it. Now, pigs and chickens are different. Pigs and chickens are omnivores. And pigs will happily eat. Chickens, for example”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so when I'm looking at or when I consider what's humane, setting aside the death part, I look at the evolutionary diet. Access to the outdoors. And ideally, spending the majority of its life outdoors, low density, so animals spread out. And engagement with young social interactions. And that's all kind of.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I look at ethical, humane, animal treatment as the major phases of life. So conception, birth and mothering. Diet, those are kind of the major touch points of life. So, what we're looking at is evolutionary approach, which means is the animal eating what it evolved to eat primarily. Is the animal primarily outdoors, which is how all animals evolved when the climate's appropriate for it's certain, you know, times when you can't have animals fully outdoors like here on our ranch, we have had issues with like cold weather and things. But so if you have appropriate weather conditions, does animal outdoors? Is the animal able to nurture and engage with its young? Those are the kind of key touch points, but it's really the birth of it. Let me start this one from the scratch.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first piece you need to just be comfortable with is that making an animal into meat is something you're comfortable with because I think that's the biggest question, right? And so certified humane actually goes all the way through the death of the animal, how it's killed and handled at processing. So I put that out there just to say, well, this is all about producing an animal to die for meat. That's not necessarily something people struggle with the word humane. And I understand that. Like, I have space and empathy for that. It's a complicated decision. And when you have to be comfortable with at the outset to say, this is an animal that's going to die to feed me.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's where I feel like we in the industry need more help. You know, the AI piece, the intelligence, the thinking about ways to do things differently is where we need more support. And I think it's been a, you know, a kind of a... Swing in the past. Couple years where it's like meets a mess. It's terrible. So let's ditch meat and opt for these hyper processed plant-based solutions. I am saying there's a way to make this a part of the solution. And it's going to mean eating less of it. It's going to mean paying more for it. It's going to mean that the farming systems are more complicated. It's not the easiest path, but I think in the long term, it's the better path. And it's also better for human health.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't see why it isn't. I mean, it's complex to scale. But I mean, we're putting people on the moon and you have a robotic dog. I mean”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have been third party verified to be carbon impact negative. So, Bell Campos 25,000 acres and animals here, all of the carbon, including from our shipping on our mail order, It's all offset by the amount of grazing that's happening. Also, that encompasses our partner farms We buy a number of live animals in from other partner farms. That's their impacts also incorporated in that.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's not a regulated term. So that's kind of the mix right now to figure out how to document it. And it's not totally clear what it means for pigs and chickens, which are omnivorous. It's very clear for ruminants, which are animals that have a rumin that eat grass. For Omnivores, which is like what we are, they eat primarily grain in farming operations, and that's a little bit more complex. So it's kind of a moving landscape, but regenerative as a word is the better definition of the whole life cycle approach of letting animals and nature work together.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the other piece of certified organics amazing. There's, you know, there's plenty of certifications that grass fed and finish is also great, but there are workarounds for those. You can have certified organic feedlots. You can have grass fed and finished, which is in animal fed a grass sellet. Aren't things that we do here, right? And regenerative captures that. Because if you're anything, you're isolating these very specific certifications, it doesn't have a holistic approach. Regenerative, though, unfortunately, isn't certified yet. We've gotten USDA approval to use that word based on our carbon sequestration data.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All implicit and regenerative. I call it out separately because we are certified humane, right? Which is another layer of welfare that has to do with density and a couple other things. But regenerative, I mean, think about it if you're a cow and you're in a regenerative operation where the whole life cycle of the pasture means that you only eat the top six inches of the grass. And then when there's whatever a couple inches left, then that feels left dormant. That's a better experience, right? So just think about kind of functionally that way.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, the science around it is limited by the scale and longevity. So the data collection around regenerative farming is also limited by the fact it's kind of piecemeal. There's small operations that are doing it. They're learning and developing as they go, and they haven't been documenting it and doing it for too long.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A number of discrete decision points that could completely be automated as well in order to supplement and work with somebody like a farmer in managing it about the performance on land. And a bit of that's being done right now with some aerial mapping, but that type of AI would be huge in this. I mean, there's estimates that if the damage and underutilized rangeland in the world was converted to regenerative agriculture at somewhere between like 20 and 40 percent of the world's Carbon could be sequestered. So there's a huge potential. The problem is cultural. We've lost the generational thread of knowledge about how to do this. It's kind of been two generations that haven't farmed this way.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why the scalability question. So, all that stuff that I just talked about, like, think about all the actions that that requires somebody's out there looking and paying attention and understanding how far the grass is, remembering what happened in that field last year. There's a huge human intelligence need and human kind of availability of attention. Now, industrial farming has done a great job at de-skilling agriculture. Industrial farming has taken agriculture from being art, science to being entry-level employment. So that's the limiting factor on regen. And that's why I think”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Plants that have been damaged and are regrowing are repairing, and they're doing that by drawing down carbon as one of the nutrients that feeds them. Damage the plants effectively, that's what we're doing with regenerative grazing. The cows are, you know, lambs, whatever, out there, they're eating and taking the grass down. And that then caused a regrowth cycle that sequesters carbon. There's a limit to it, there's an edge. Because if those plants are so damaged that they can't regrow, then it turns into a dirt patch, and that doesn't sequester any carbon. So it's a balance.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, in traditional ag, you don't have inputs that are very convenient. You can put some chicken manure on, but you can't spray or dump something that massively increases the growing potential of the land. That was not available until the past 60 years. So regenerative agriculture is an approach to farming where you're increasing soil fertility through your farming Increase soil fertility by feeding the soil. You feed the soil through carbon. That's why regenerative farming is better for the environment. It sequesters carbon and puts carbon into the soil. Now, it's interesting plants need carbon and put it into the soil when they're going through growth. So, if you have a beautiful field of grass that's just waving in the wind, that's not sequestering as much carbon as plants that have been damaged and are regrowing.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So if you're looking at scaling regenerative farming, A traditional system of agriculture. Regenerative farming is how we used to farm. We used to farm with an eye towards the long term. You might be on the Friedman farm thinking about your heirs five generations from now, farming that same land. Are you going to leave that land nutritionally empty?”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's about a network of smaller producers working together with shared values. True, there's a limit on regenerative farming in that it requires more human knowledge. So regenerative farming is more difficult to scale in a single operation. It'd be really challenging to have a regenerative farm that was like 200,000 acres because of the amount of manpower needed to pay attention.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Grown more naturally, and I think some of the reliance in the US on like sugary sauces and lots of salts and flavors and things, like that's actually based on having the broadly available meat out there is pretty low on flavor. And so we're adding in a lot to compensate for that. So to your point of like enjoying things very simply and with like salt and nothing else, like the more flavorful that product is, I think, the more people will find that enjoyable.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the question of where does it come from, and does that matter, I'd say the way that meat is raised is massively important for flavor and for how it cooks. I think most Who try cooking grass fed versus corn fed? That's the first moment where they realize that, right? Where cornfed meat cooks much more slowly. It's got bigger veins of fat that slow the heat transfer throughout the muscle of the animal compared to grass fed, which is leaner heat moves through it more quickly. Those steaks will cook much, much faster. So there's very kind of technical reasons why how meat is raised that we're aware of. And there's other things that I've noticed like that slower growing poultry has a very, very different musculature and fiber to it than fast growing poultry that's confinement animals. It's just, it has to do with the way that the mussels are built. They tend to be finer and thinner and more tender and a little bit more susceptible to heat. So the character of the meats radically different. It's also much more flavorful.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shorten that cycle with carbon with charcoal. It's more efficient. But what you lose is that whole cycle of that really beautiful experience of smelling. Now, if you're cooking on a Traeger, you're going to get awesome smoke smell. You know, like there's plenty of ways to do this. It doesn't always have to be wood fire. And I love all the different ways, right? But I really like the experience of the campfire. And I love that kind of just like sitting by it, building it, having to take the time, like building the fire, going inside, preparing all my meats, bringing them out, cooking them. That whole experience start to finish is really just like something that it's my favorite. It's my favorite way to spend time, you know? So I think, and why is that? Is the food that different than cooking it in a more conventional grill? Probably not. You know, like in a pure experience. But I think the actual experience is super memorable because you are outside, you are slow in your role. You're enjoying this, you know, you're just taking in your watch.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really key with the wood fire. So when we evolved from cooking over wood to charcoal, right, when that became more popular, the reason that we did that is that allowed us to skip the whole part of making our own charcoal, right? So when you're cooking over wood, all you're doing is making your own charcoal. You don't ever cook over wood with the red fire like we don't like throw a steak on when the flames are orange and leaping up because you're just going to get, you know, carbon like char all over your meat. So when you're cooking over wood, you first cook down the wood, you create the coal base, the natural coal base, and then you cook over that. So you saw yesterday I built my fire, I let it burn down, added some fresh wood so I could reinforce my coals with new coals coming in, but then I was actually cooking over the embers.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It smells like heaven, right? It smells fatty and delicious, and it smells everywhere, and everyone's smelling the same smell. So there's like this collective experience. It's incredible. That's, I mean, I think that's why barbecue is so sticky for people. It's like so yummy, and you get this huge anticipatory thing about it. It's like because it smells incredible.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were talking exactly about that like the nuance and the beauty of that long, slow cook and your house smelling like something. Why do people freak out about barbecue? You go and it smells bomb. It smells so good”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Typically, you can kind of control for that if you just are going really hot and fast, which is why grass grills are fine if you're just like throwing that steak on, get a hard sear on those burgers, put a crust on it. Grass fabulous for that. Perfect when you're doing things that do better with a low and slow cook, like let's say a whole tenderloin or chicken thigh, that's going to be a little bit less elegant on gas than on charcoal versus wood. So when you have more kind of nuance in the low slow cook over the natural fuels.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You go very hot and fast, you risk the interior of the meat not getting right, you kind of create a shell on it and you slow down the interior of the meat, which you actually want to do with something like a steak where you want to keep it rare on the inside. So it's really indirect versus direct. Then once you get into direct heat, right, like in that category, there's wood, charcoal, gas, right? That's about it. And those are meaningfully different. They're meaningfully different. Charcoal and wood, that's more of there's more poetry and wood. There's a little bit more flavor, not functionally very different. But gas versus charcoal wood is very different. And that's because of the actual scent of the cook, right? The scent of the flavor. And then there's, I think, an evenness of heat distribution that comes off of charcoal that's different from gas because no matter how awesome your gas grill is, you do have hotter and cooler spots. So grills are”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's indirect heat and direct heat. And that really is mostly about temperature. In more than actual, I mean, smoke is important as well that can permeate, but really, the smoke doesn't go into the center of most cuts that you barbecue. It'll come in like the smoke ring. It's maximum like half an inch on the outside, maybe a little bit deeper on a really long, slow cook. But the smoke does create a ton of flavor on the surface of the meat. So the indirect allows you to have smoke contacting it and then a very, very low and slow heat. And what that does is indirect heat will be low and slow enough that the center of the meat will get warm at the same time as the exterior of the meat. It'll all cook equally and all get equally tender.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to cook it extremely differently from my steak. That's a half inch thick or three quarters of an inch thick. And that's the major. And that's the truth. If I have a piece of pork shoulder that's cut into cubes versus having a whole pork shoulder, that surface area to volume ratio. That's going to totally change how I cook it. And same things like pot roast and a beef stew would be the same cut of meat, right? But how I cook them is going to change based on the surface area of volume. Because you've got to let moisture and heat work its way into the center of the meat. And that's going to be determined by the amount of surface of the meat that's in contact with whatever cooking liquid or heat you've got.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when you're looking at how do I understand how I'm going to cook a piece of meat, that first fork in the road is how is this going to respond to heat and what's the appropriate cooking technique? Then the second piece is that surface area to volume ratio. And that's important because the heat is going to impact the meat through the surfaces of the meat that are in contact with the heat. So, if I have a steak that's three inches thick,”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The fat will make the flavor more delicious, right? Like it'll add unctuousness and mouthfeel and things like that. But all the connective tissue in meat and in some of the cuts that we ate at a skirt steak last night, you could see a web. Of that collagen sheath on the outside. On a rib eye, that same collagen sheath is this big. There's only one, it goes around the outside, okay? Because it's just that muscle, there's one large muscle fiber. So, that specific, it's a myelin sheath, right? That material needs moisture and low and slow heat to become tender. The other side of that is that when it becomes tender, it liquefies and it adds all this beautiful gelatinous consistency. That's what bone broth is. That's why a...”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not about the fat. You can cut the fat out. The reason you're not going to throw a brisket on the grill and cook it hot and fast is it's got too much collagenous connective tissue in it. Those are these giant muscles that have all this collagen and these fibers and tendons in them effectively. So you're never going to be able to just cook that up hot fast. So that's the first piece. It's like where's this muscle in the architecture of the animal and then what does that mean for what's going on in the muscle? And that's actually more important than fat content. We get really kind of, we pay a lot of attention to fat content in muscles. You can make a steak tender if it doesn't have a ton of fat in it. It actually has more to do if there's collagenous and connective tissue in it.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That connective tissue is everything in how the meat cooks because connective tissue doesn't respond to high heat with becoming more tender muscles do right they can get a sear on them you can cut them and eat them the collagen situ will glom up and get really tough so you either have to liquefy it with really low slow heat with moisture right or you have to barely cook it and that's so that's the major piece so that's the question of like why wouldn't you just throw a brisket on the grill”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Other muscles like the ones around the diaphragm with the flat iron stakes and skirt stakes and things, those are really functional muscles that are doing a ton and moving. And if they're moving a lot, what happens? Well, functionally, they've got lots of muscle sheaths because muscles that move frequently have to do a lot of like complex contraction. That's why in the cheek, for example, there's tons of visible fiber of like collagenous connective tissue.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the first piece is what's the type of muscle in the animal? What's the functionality? You don't necessarily need to know that to evaluate it, but you need to understand, is it a tender muscle that's not used very frequently in the animal, or is it a big load-bearing muscle that gets a lot of action, like the cheek, right? Or the shin or those pieces. The muscles like those along the spinal cord that make up rib eyes in New York steaks and things, those aren't very exercised. They're right next to the spinal cord. Spinal cord's doing most of the work there. They're kind of like stabilizing muscles around this big functional piece of skeletal structure in the animal.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basic approach to cooking any type of meat. Beyond that artistry of it is pretty scientific. Type of muscle is it in the animal, and what's the surface area to volume ratio? Okay, so let's look at those two questions”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you see this a lot in baking and bakers, people who bake a ton, and they love the process of it, even if they don't eat that many baked goods. So anything for me that's really enjoyable is typically things like making cinnamon buns. I don't eat very many cinnamon buns, but I love making them because it takes all the sort of like futzing around and taking your time and watching it, the way it smells, the way the house smells. All of that stuff is like almost like a like a meditative exercise for me.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very laborious. It's soothing for me to spend time picking apart me and chopping things up. There's like a lot of manuality around it. So I'd say from a personal like, I mean, I love grilling a steak and doing those things as well, but there's something about making a stock from scratch and the way it smells, the way I feel, the time it takes, the kind of checking in on it that I really, really love. There's many things I love to make that I don't even love to eat.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll roast a couple chickens and then I'll poach them, like I'll boil them and let it cool down. It's a complicated one. I'll let them cool down. I'll pull all the meat off, put the bones back into the pot, and then cook that for like three or four hours. And then add in like shitake mushrooms and all the chicken meat. And I'll throw in a bottle of white wine into the stock as well, a bunch of thyme and garlic. And I love it because it's the way the house smells.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I love all of oil as a treat in a spoon. A good California extroversion, all of it, I'll just like have it. I'll eat a piece of butter as a Or butter with salt on it. Like, good fats can, all of them can be, if they're minimally processed, it's so delicious, right? But there are things that you have to look for a version of them that's got that full palate of flavor.”
2021-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #203 – Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source